"Best Athlete" Quarter-Finals
We have advanced to the quarter-finals of the first ever Sports Action “Best Athlete” Bracket. There were several upsets in the first round and could be many more before this bracket is all said and done. Here is how the bracket now breaks down.
In the Deion Sanders Bracket the top overall seed, LeBron James, moved on over Miami Heat teammate Dwyane Wade. He will face the only UFC athlete in the competition, Jon “Bones” Jones, in the next round after Jones upset fourth seeded Bryce Harper of the MLB‘s Washington Nationals. The Boston Red Sox’s Carl Crawford, a three-sport all-state athlete in high school and number six seed in this bracket, also pulled the upset over the Philadelphia Eagles’ DeSean Jackson and will face Calvin “Megatron” Johnson in the quarters.
In the Bo Jackson half of the bracket the second overall seed Blake Griffin advanced easily, and now will face Dwight Howard who beat out the Atlanta Falcons’ Tony Gonzalez, who has been called one of the best athletes in NFL history. Finally Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers upset fellow NFLer Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints, who played both basketball and football at The University of Miami, and will be facing Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder who dispatched the only soccer player in the bracket, Christiano Ronaldo.
Here is how the quarters look:
Deion Sanders Bracket
1. LeBron James vs. 5. Jon “Bones” Jones
2. Calvin Johnson vs. 6. Carl Crawford
Bo Jackson Bracket
1. Blake Griffin vs. 5. Dwight Howard
2. Russell Westbrook vs. 6. Cam Newton
We will post these on social media so people can vote, or you can vote by leaving a comment on this page. Voting will close tonight at midnight and the results will be announced in the morning tomorrow.
Official NBA Playoffs Picks
Almost mid-way through the NBA Playoffs me and Jonnie Motomochi have gone back and forth on our picks and who we feel is playing the best. This week on the show I made my final picks for the rest of the playoffs. Here they are:
Conference Semis
Spurs already advanced
Lakers/Thunder- Thunder in 5 (ends tonight)
Celtics/Sixers- Sixers in 6 (hasn’t changed)
Heat/Pacers- Heat in 7 (had them in a sweep, didn’t happen that way I guess)
Conference Finals
Thunder/Spurs-Thunder in 7 (best series of the playoffs thus far)
Heat/Sixers- Heat in 5 (Philly doesn’t have the height of Indiana, but the Sixers will make the games close)
NBA Finals
Heat/Thunder-Heat in 6 (Bosh will be back and finally at full strength, LeBron finally wins title)
The individual match ups in the NBA Finals will make it one for the ages. LeBron and Durant will battle, Westbrook and Wade will provide highlight reel plays, Bosh and Ibaka will bang down low and hit their outside jumpers. Spoelstra and Brooks are two of the best young coaches in the NBA right now. This will be the best NBA Finals since the 1998 Bulls/Jazz Finals.
The Artest Formerly Known as Metta World Peace
By now all of you have probably seen the video of Lakers forward Metta World Peace elbowing Thunder sixth-man of the year candidate James Harden in the head after dunking on a fast break in the Lakers 2OT win over the Thunder recently. Yesterday the NBA handed down a 7 game suspension to World Peace, costing him more than $400,000 in pay over that span. This last week on “Sports Action” guest-host Alex Crawford and I discussed the incident and how long we felt a suspension should last.
For those of you out there who thought that World Peace became a new person when he changed the name on the back of his jersey, you might want to go back and re-evaluate that. This is not new for World Peace who has been suspended multiple times for incidents similar to this throughout his career.
On November 20, 2004 the NBA suspended World Peace, Ron Artest at the time, 86 games for his part in the “Malice at the Palace” incident in which he went into the stands and physically assaulted a fan. He has been ejected out of more games than I can count on both hands and in December 2009 he admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac at halftime of games during his stint with the Chicago Bulls in the early 2000’s.
When he signed with the Lakers in 2009 many people believed that he would change his ways with Kobe Bryant watching over him. Then on September 16, 2011 the name change from Ron Artest to Metta World Peace came. There was speculation that the reason he changed his name was so that people could no longer say “I hate World Peace”.
With two years left on his current contract with the Lakers this latest incident raises questions about whether or not the Lakers will want to keep him around or try and find a market and trade him and the, almost, $15 million still owed on his contract away after this season.
All-in-all it has become apparent that no matter how many times World Peace changes his name or acts as though he is normal he will never be able to escape the person that he really is. Finally it is my prediction that if the Lakers are eliminated in the first or second round this year then World Peace will be shipped off for what he is worth, maybe a second-round draft pick. If that does happen do we possibly see a Chad Ochocinco move where World Peace changes his name back to Artest? Now that would be a story.
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